William+J.F.+Bullerman

Mr. and Mrs. William J.F. Bullerman ran "a rather mysterious sort of rookery" in Chicago in 1879. There, police discovered a woman named Elizabeth Foley, seriously ill with septicemia.

They took Mrs. Foley to Cook County Hospital, where she languished until her death around November 9. To the end, Elizabeth denied having undergone an abortion. She insisted that she'd given birth and that her sister, Mary, and taken the child to their mother's home in Greenbaugh, Wisconsin. Mary denied this, and her employer told police that she'd not been out of town at all.

The post-mortem examination showed that Elizabeth had indeed died from an abortion. The Bullermans were easy enough to find and charge with a crime, since they were in the county lock-up for stealing $250 in gas. Mary was held as an accessory.

“City,” Chicago Tribune, November 4, 8, & 10, 1879